Memento Mori
by Iseki
Summary: Phoebe is a social outcast; a numerical butterfly. She has a love- one that can be boiled down to chemicals and circumstance, but this does not demystify it. Too bad then, that somewhere she got the formula wrong- she never factored in their own mortality. Gift Oneshot for the Dares Forum.


_A/N: I chose Regardless1604 aka A.J. for my entry in the Gift Oneshot Dare from the Dares Forum! A.J. is lovely and encouraging, a good author and read/reviewer! I hope she likes this little token of my appreciation._

_Please forgive the title. I'm a Persona 3 addict, I have a penchant for nonsensical latin titles, and I know it's horribly overused, but I could not for the life of me think of anything else to call it once this stuck.  
_

_I hope everyone got some lovely gifts during this dare. __Thanks to the mods swingdancer23 and violetfireflies for organizing it!_

* * *

Human life was a miracle of biology. A component of intelligence not seen in other animals; at least not any discovered within their known galaxy. A combination of bone and sinew following directives that produced graceful and precise movement, the likes of which that were to this day still forestalling reproduction by the great minds in robotics.

It was all very fascinating but Biology was not her field.

As Phoebe gasped clipped and uneven breaths she found herself strangely remorseful of this, and yet she could not deny it. Her love was with the Earth; its beautiful deposits of metal and mineral, glorious stone to be shaped and carved; old things- older than humans and their finely honed intelligence, their miraculous motion.

Regret being the creature that it was, her pride had begun to crumble into mere childishness. It wasn't fair. She wasn't a biologist; she didn't want to be a biologist. She especially wasn't very well versed in medics. She was here because of who she was and however nauseating she would have to accept that.

A dry and feeble cough brought her back to reality. Her eyes once clouded behind red-framed and cracked glasses were now sharply focused.

"Calvin," she called softly, daring to shake him gently from where he rested in her lap. Her voice took a detestable pitch at the end of his name until it sounded like a question.

_Calvin, are you still with me?_

They were in the mines. They'd broken through to a unique level of temple which gave way to catacombs and eventually caverns and it was there that they'd fallen. The rocky outcropping below may have caught them, but the rain of ancient untouched stone from above was unforgiving. She should have known that the cave was an erosional type. The clues were written in the formations, in the mineral present. At the very least she should have sent him back, she shouldn't have been so eager.

He opened his eyes a crack, the slivers of blue not diminished in their likeness to the sky, and he smiled. That smile more than any other before it made her heart ache terribly. She swallowed at a lump.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

This was only their thirteenth meeting.

She was a scientist, _damn it,_ she didn't believe in numerical superstition. They were acquainted on the first, and she was enchanted by the second, but the thirteenth should lead to the fourteenth, and by the sixteenth maybe they would eat dinner. Her experience with romance might grossly inadequate but _this-_ this she did not deserve. There was that childishness again, she admonished, wiping hot angry tears so that Calvin wouldn't see.

"It's only 5:30," she breathed resolutely, "my parents will look for me once I miss dinner." But even as the words passed her lips the math didn't add up. By the time they had found her missing and organized a search party it would already be an hour maybe even two before they started searching. They were at least 20 feet underground, with the probability that it was even more a stomach-turning fact.

They were trapped in a bubble maybe four persons wide and 4 feet tall. In the time given their oxygen supplies would become frightfully limited, and to make matter worse Calvin had managed to shield her during their fall and had taken several heavy blows to his back before the ground beneath them gave way. The observable damage didn't seem like much but she'd deduced that numerous bones were broken. From the corner of his mouth a scarlet drop had appeared both beautiful in the darkness and hideous in its significance; he was bleeding internally as well.

"Yeah," he rasped, and her heart seized up again, "I reckon so."

Phoebe wanted to tear him apart for his radiance in a moment so dark. How could he be so perfectly certain, so encouraging, so _Calvin _when their chances were so slight. _She_ was meant to be helping _him_ to stay positive.

She couldn't waste their precious air with much more talking, but there were a million things she wanted to say. Instead they gathered ineptly into two little words, blubbering and weak.

"I'm sorry,"

Calvin smiled again, trying to sit up, but when his body rejected the action and she held him down he sufficed to placing a big open palm to her cheek. She nearly shook it away, fearful that he would feel the heat, the dirty tracks her tears had left, but instead she leaned into it; grabbing hold with her own smaller hands.

"Nothing to be sorry for," His smile lingered. His chest moved shallowly, as though for all the pain that was likely lancing at him with each breath he knew that he had to remain calm; for the sake of their oxygen.

"I've always liked an adventure." He said. His laugh was a poor mimicry of what it once could be; deep and melodious. Now there were only hoarse echoes in their impossible tomb to break her heart over and over.

Phoebe realized that she loved him, and that the realization however rushed had come far too late. If she told him now it would be like signing his death warrant. Instead she leaned over him, craning her neck so as not to displace him, and he sensing her intention lifted his chin. Their kiss was dusty, clumsy, and a little bit frightened. Whether the fear was what drew them together or a result of their hurried leap into the unknown remained to be seen. His kiss carried the tang of blood, but somehow that seemed an entirely unimportant detail. He dropped back into her lap and she rested her forehead to his until her back ached from the position.

Time became a wily thing. There was no light to read her watch, and even if there had been she'd felt it's cracked face early on and guessed that it'd probably broken during their descent. Instead she counted minutes and drew a finger through the settled grit beside her. The marks were fives, then tens, then hours, and then she ran out of space.

Calvin slept soundlessly, an intermittent rattle in his chest the only evidence that it was any different from an afternoon nap. She could guess that it was both his injury and their circumstances that he slept. He was an intelligent man: a human sleeping has a lower ventilation rate than one who is awake. Phoebe wanted to follow his example, to conserve for their survival together, but some terrible part of her whispered the possibility that if she did she might wake up alone.

She pulled Calvin up securely to her breast and shuffled tighter along the wall. With the same cracked face of her watch she struck the obscuring rock cautiously. A sound or movement too extreme could upset the balance and their bubble would collapse inward, heedless of what bodies might already occupy the space, but a tap just so could produce a sound nevertheless. She knew this world, she could hear the hollows beyond resonate, and a likely hollow would in turn echo her sound.

_Please hear us... _she prayed.

She continued to tap even as her breathing shuddered into short heavy pants. The darkness beyond her glasses seemed to swim, and the icy cold touch of the caves crept upon them both. She squeezed Calvin closer and he gave a sigh. She imagined if she could still focus on his face that the smile might still be there, but her eyelids felt very heavy now.

Tap, tap, tap, tap... _Please hear us...please._

Calvin felt so cold.

Tap...tap...tap...

Grit and pebble showered her shoulder. At the toe of their bubble came a groan of rock against rock. A tremor rocked her entire body as pinpricks of light began to glow inside the fissure. A sudden intake of surprise and air proved that their supply was not yet exhausted.

"Calvin," she murmured, finding her mouth dry and grainy with dust, her voice barely above a whisper, "I think they're coming, I think we're going to get out," as the haze of slow suffocation seemed to clear so returned her sense of taboo; she wasn't meant to talk like that, that sort of talk only willed the inevitable. She brushed his cheek carefully, splayed her fingers across his heartbeat and gave a shake, but he refused to respond.

_Sleepyhead_, she chided teasingly.

She could hear voices up above growing distant.

"Hey!" she cried hurriedly, tapping her watch with renewed vigour, "hey!"

The voices grew closer and the pinpricks of light brighter, until her eyes stung from the dust and brilliance and a fresh stream of tears graced her cheeks.

"They're coming," Phoebe said to Calvin, her voice cracking. With one hand she tapped and with the other she held him tightly. "They're coming..." Her head bowed, her wrist continued to strike the rock with urgent yet solemn sounds.

She heard her mother's voice directing, and her father usually so placid giving fevered grunts as he worked to move the stone. There must have been many others with them; the ceiling of the bubble-_their bubble_- gave way, until the light pooled in like wildfire spreading across a forest.

Her tears fell against Calvin's cheek, leaving little pits in the grime that disguised his handsome face. In the light she confirmed what she'd already suspected.

"Phoebe!" Simon cried.

"Oh Phoebe," her mother wept.

She didn't have the strength to answer their calls. She didn't have the strength to meet their eyes. And no one dared to reach for her.

_Silly man, _she felt everything she was tremble and break, _you terrible silly man. _

In the light she could clearly see.

Calvin slept eternal with a smile on his face; a smile that was gentle, that was charming, that was _oh-so_ Calvin.

* * *

FIN

* * *

_A/N: Again, this was created for Regardless1604 aka A.J. for the Gift Oneshot Dare in the Dares Forum. Going by her preferences from last year she may not still appreciate Phoebe as a main character, or tragedy as a genre, but alas! This is what she gets! I wanted to gift someone in the community and I wanted to do something I don't normally go for. In all of my HM fandom I have never really written much of Phoebe or Calvin and I have yet to do their rival oneshot in Heart's Opposition. I also don't usually dabble in character death! So I hope I did it justice... I think I might actually like Calvin despite what little he actually got to do in this one. He's just a big smart chivalrous man._

_Thanks for reading :) reviews get so much love_


End file.
